


In Case of Emergency

by aliaoftwoworlds



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Iron Dad, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, little bit of genuine medicine and little bit of made up science, migraines, other canon characters mentioned/briefly present, poor Peter's sensory overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15976850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliaoftwoworlds/pseuds/aliaoftwoworlds
Summary: Tony is listed as one of Peter's emergency contacts.





	In Case of Emergency

**Author's Note:**

> Another departure from my usual stuff, but I saw a post about this on tumblr and it was so sweet I couldn’t help myself. I love me some good iron dad content :) I didn’t exactly follow the post, but oh well. 
> 
> This takes place after Homecoming sometime, I’m completely ignoring any and all canon after that in terms of Infinity War (which I still haven't actually seen) and stuff. It’s just a fluffy thing assuming that after Homecoming, Tony started working more closely with Peter and after some long talks after May walked in on him in his suit, May is okay with Peter being Spiderman as long as he doesn’t run off and do anything too stupid (and because she knows Tony’s got his back).
> 
> I haven’t been in high school for over 6 years now (holy crap I feel old suddenly) so forgive me if I don’t quite remember how all that works.
> 
> Post: http://child-of-sunshine.tumblr.com/post/178006704879/loveironstrange-stark-tony-i-adore-tony

There was a learning curve to Peter’s powers, both the good and the bad parts. He wasn’t an idiot or a little kid, but still, he hadn’t really, truly understood the meaning of all those phrases like “everything comes with a price” until he’d gotten his new abilities. After all, being able to climb walls and lift cars and swing from buildings was awesome, but constantly feeling guilty about not doing enough to stop crime wasn’t. Fighting bad guys was cool, but coming home bruised and worrying his aunt and sometimes missing classes certainly wasn’t. And super senses were neat, but being suddenly overwhelmed by simple stuff and the occasional blinding, completely debilitating migraine definitely wasn’t.

The first time it happened, about a month after he got his powers, he literally fell over on the street, right in front of May, and ended up in the ER. He described his symptoms once he was able to talk without instantly throwing up, then they scanned his head and took some blood—he had to admit that worried him, he had weird powers now but he hadn’t told anyone and what if they could tell something was wrong with his blood? But they just checked some electrolytes or something and said everything was normal—and told him everything was medically fine. They said it was just a really, really awful migraine, gave him meds that didn’t do anything, and sent him home.

For all that the meds didn’t do anything because the headaches originated from his superpowered senses and the scale was even more dramatic than most, Peter concluded that they were more or less the same as normal migraines. He read up about auras and avoiding certain stimuli, and after the fourth one in two months, figured out how to block out some of the background stuff when he was really tuning in to his powers; darkened goggles on his suit, extra padding around the ears, things like that. 

Meanwhile, thinking it was just a normal medical condition, May told all his teachers and made sure they wouldn’t give him a hard time if he went down during class, and started bringing home all these suggestions and little things for stress relief. She got him to try yoga with her in the apartment—he had to admit, it was probably good for him in terms of being Spiderman anyway—and putting out things that smelled subtly like sandalwood and lavender and trying to get him to take more warm baths. She could be a bit overbearing at times, but she was trying so hard to help him, and god did he love her.

After Germany and then the whole fiasco with Mr. Toomes, when he started working more with Mr. Stark, he noticed a decline in the migraines and the little tension headaches from overwhelming stimulus. Which was weird, because he was pushing himself more than ever with the amazing suit Mr. Stark had given him, and the times he got to go over to Mr. Stark’s lab, the place was full of bright lights and crazy noises and all kinds of stuff that he thought should have set him off. But then again, he’d seen Mr. Stark make a few gestures and faces that suggested to Peter he might have his own experience with migraines. Maybe, despite all the different stimuli, certain things about his tech were designed to not aggravate headaches.

Still, a decline wasn’t a total loss. After the first one in the lab, Mr. Stark—looking more panicked than Peter thought he should have, okay, maybe Peter doubled over and just slid right off his workbench onto the floor in the middle of a project and then wouldn’t open his eyes for thirty minutes, but there was no need to _panic_ , it’s not like he was dying, though thinking back he might have mumbled something about feeling like he was dying, okay so maybe there _was_ a reason to be worried at least from Mr. Stark's perspective—demanded an explanation and Peter told him everything he knew about the migraines, not that that was much. He knew they came from his sensory overload sometimes because of his powers, that the meds doctors had given him didn’t do anything, and how to tell when he was building up to one and sometimes manage to avoid it. He also tentatively mentioned that they’d seemed to be better since he’d started wearing the suit Mr. Stark had given him and coming to work in the lab, which made Mr. Stark get this sort of sappy smile that almost made the nausea and head-splitting pain worth it. Almost.

They didn’t really mention it again, other than Mr. Stark telling him to watch better for the signs and warn him if he was going to collapse in the lab, for god’s sake, which Peter promised with nearly complete sincerity he would do. He’d try, of course, but when he was working on a project he got so focused that sometimes he forgot to pay any attention to his body or the outside world at all. He got the feeling, from some of the things Mr. Stark’s friends and stuff said sometimes when they came down to see him in the lab, that Mr. Stark experienced something similar.

The start of the new school year came around and he had to cut down on the time he spent working in the SI labs and as Spiderman. Already, since getting his powers, he’d been slipping a bit in school—not in terms of his grades, he was smart enough to be one of those guys other people hated, who didn’t have to try at all to pass everything—but in terms of being late for class, or just plain leaving when something happened. He was quitting his extracurriculars in order to have time for Spiderman and people who didn’t know about it—which was everyone, with the exception of Ned and Mr. Stark and now May thanks to his own idiocy, and maybe MJ, who always looked at him like she knew something he didn’t—were starting to accept his “Stark internship” excuse less and less.

But he was keeping up his grades and Mr. Stark understood that he needed to be in school. He’d been talking to Peter about college lately and Peter had started to get a little guilty feeling, knowing that he had the potential to be a really great student and get in just about anywhere, especially with a recommendation from someone like Mr. Stark, but that he was ignoring it in favor of other things. Mr. Stark kept telling him that Spiderman and “superheroing” would always be there, but that these opportunities would go by a lot faster than he thought, and he was starting to see the truth in that. That, and May, for all she’d been surprisingly accepting of the Spiderman thing after a while, also expected him to keep up his grades and his normal life, and would flay him alive if he didn’t go to college. So he pulled back a bit and focused a little more on school.

It was the first week and they were still getting all the paperwork and stuff sorted out, getting locker assignments and changing classes last minute and signing up for teams and clubs and online class stuff, when the form came up. Emergency contacts. Since his parents had died, it had always just been him and May, but the schools all required students to list at least two contacts. So, for as long as he could remember, it had been May and Joyce, one of May’s friends who lived just outside the city and used to work with her. Joyce was nice, Peter had known her for a long time and she came over to see them every once in a while, but she wasn’t exactly a close friend or anything. She’d come to pick him up once when he was sick in middle school and May had been caught up in some really important business thing, but he hadn’t even seen her in the last few years.

So after a pause and a brief war with himself, wondering if it was stupid, he listed May as usual as his first contact… and then Mr. Stark as the second. After all, wasn’t it true? Maybe it was as Iron Man and Spiderman, but Mr. Stark was always there to be his backup (or his rescue) if needed and he’d been hinting around about helping him with homework and college applications too, lately. And chances were they’d never have to contact anyone for him, anyway. Peter rarely got sick even before he got powers, and he hadn’t had so much as a cold since becoming Spiderman. He didn’t fake illnesses to get out of school, and if an emergency really happened, he’d be more likely to disappear and be off to change into his suit than to get into trouble that required contacting anyone.

When he got to the front of the line and turned the form in to the secretary, she glanced at it briefly, then did a tiny double take, frowning at it. She looked up, clearly skeptical, but Peter was already backing away, hurriedly saying something about needing to get his ID card. He caused a small commotion by backing right into the person in line behind him and making them drop all of their books, which was enough of a distraction that he could get away before she could try to question him about it. 

What could they do, anyway? It was a real name and number, and they couldn’t prove he didn’t actually know Tony Stark—besides, he really did. His biggest fear was that they’d call the number to see if it was real and bug Mr. Stark, who’d then probably call Peter and it would be an embarrassing mess, but hopefully he had enough going for him as a previously good student to make them overlook it. With luck, no one would ever have to know.

But luck wasn’t usually on his side. It was a month and a half into the year and he was in the middle of calculus, bored out of his mind because this was all so _easy_ , seriously, he did basic integrals practically in his sleep when he was working with Karen or Mr. Stark on coding his suit and his web shooters. Instead of taking notes, he was idly drawing out schematics for one of his new upgrades and occasionally poking Ned, who kept leaning over to peer at what he was working on and trying to add annotations, right in view of Mr. Davison.

He hadn’t had one of his migraines in nearly four months and he blamed that break for causing him not to recognize the signs until it was too late. By the way he stiffened in his seat and his hands suddenly jumped to his head, he knew Ned knew what the problem was. Silently thanking his friend for knowing what to do and taking over talking to Mr. Davison for him, he shoved himself out of his seat and stumbled to the door as fast as he could.

All of his teachers and many of his classmates knew by now about his “condition,” but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing to collapse in front of them. Thankfully, he made it into the hallway before he had to lean against the wall and slide to the floor, the pain in his head overtaking everything else.

It was a few seconds, or minutes, or maybe hours—time was weird when everything hurt so bad—before he felt warm hands on his shoulders. Ned, probably—hopefully—trying to get him up and to the nurse’s office so they could give him his meds and he could pretend they worked once the migraine went away on its own. But his legs were already jelly and he couldn’t really hear what Ned was saying to him, and he was afraid if he opened his eyes they might just pop right out of his head and roll across the floor and then all his brains would leak out of the holes.

He wasn’t sure if he actually managed to say any of that out loud, but Ned clearly got the picture that he wasn’t standing up on his own, because the touch disappeared for a while. Some time later there were hands again on him, multiple pairs, and he couldn’t focus enough to count them. He only knew that they were lifting him up because the movement launched the nausea into “imminent hurling” territory and he had to focus every functioning neuron he could harness on not barfing all over one of his teachers, or whoever it was who was picking him up. The other kids at school weren’t too bad about his occasional migraines and having to be taken out of class, but throwing up on someone was something you didn’t live down in high school unless it was at a party and there was alcohol involved.

Moving sucked and felt like it lasted about a year and a half—he must have missed his college applications and his graduation, all because of a migraine, dang—but finally he was set down on something relatively firm and plastic, his head hit a pillow and he was covered with a blanket, and the light behind his eyelids dimmed. He groaned out something he hoped sounded appreciative and tried his very best to focus on breathing and relaxing his neck and shoulders, trying to remember techniques he’d read about for helping migraines go away faster.

Maybe it was because it had been so long since the last one, but he could swear this one was worse than ever before. It had come on so suddenly and he could swear there was no warning, things didn’t get wavy or really weirdly crisp like they sometimes did beforehand. 

There was a cool hand on his head and a soft voice saying something to him, but he couldn’t focus enough to figure out what it was saying. Something touched the side of his face, though, and he recognized the nasal spray his sumatriptan came in. He’d have made a face at it, he hated the stuff and it didn’t work anyway—not that anyone but Mr. Stark, May, and Ned knew that—but he was afraid moving any of his facial muscles more than absolutely necessary would make the headache worse, so he just slowly moved a hand up to grasp the spray and administer it himself, then let whoever it was, presumably the nurse, take it away again.

He had finally, _finally_ , managed to relax enough to just begin to drift off when there was another hand on his shoulder and a quiet voice saying his name. Annoyance overtaking his need to stay quiet to preserve his head, he managed to groan his displeasure at being bothered, and managed to be grateful that the sound only made his head hurt a bit more, rather than rocketing it into the stratosphere like earlier.

“Peter,” the woman next to him was saying, barely above a whisper so as not to disturb him but still making his head pound just a bit harder. “Do you know where your aunt is? She didn’t answer when we called.”

Thinking was hard and talking coherently was harder, but he did actually know the answer to that one. “Her cousin’s having surgery right now,” he managed to whisper back. “She’s going to be at the hospital until tonight. They’re not supposed to have cell phones back in OR holding.” That many words was a lot to get out and Peter pressed his lips together when he was done talking, hoping they’d go away. They really didn’t need to send someone to pick him up, if they’d just let him rest here until he felt good enough to get up and walk, he could get home by himself. But he didn’t know how to tell them that in few enough words to be worth the effort of talking.

“Someone needs to come and get you, Peter,” the nurse said gently, and Peter managed a tiny grimace. “Who can we call?”

Another wave of nausea rose in him. “Don’t you have my emergency form?” he managed before he had to groan and press his hand to his mouth to keep from throwing up. The talking thing was really not good. 

There was a pause, and he could practically feel the hesitance. “Uh, Peter, you put… do you have a relative named Stark?”

If he didn’t feel like absolute hell, the situation might be funny. In most other circumstances, he could probably enjoy this, and happily tell them to go ahead and call the real Tony Stark, that he had Iron Man’s personal phone number and that the billionaire himself would probably come pick Peter up from school if they called, assuming he wasn’t on the other side of the world fighting alien robots or something. But Peter was in too much pain and trying too hard not to throw up to appreciate any of that. He just managed to halfheartedly wave a hand out from under his blanket and croak out, “just call it,” before clapping the hand back over his mouth and swallowing harshly.

Thankfully, the nurse left him alone after that. There was another long stretch where he was left alone in the blissfully silent, dark room. His senses were in overdrive enough that he could hear when the bells rang, even though the closest one was around two corners, and classes switched. He heard the pounding of hundreds of feet in the hallway as everyone moved to their last class of the day. If only this could have waited another hour and a half, he’d have been out of school and Ned and MJ could have just taken him home and been done with it. May wouldn’t have even had to know about this one, it would have been over by the time she got back from the hospital.

The noise died down and Peter relaxed again. He hadn’t been aware that the muffled sounds had been enough to make him tense up all over, but it apparently had. He consciously relaxed his muscles and concentrated on some deep breathing exercises. He didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep again, but he could at least relax and help the migraine die down.

There was a calloused hand stroking gently along his hair and over his forehead, and Peter realized he’d fallen asleep. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it must have been a while, because… “Mr. Stark?” he whispered without opening his eyes, wincing at the sudden sound of his own voice and shoving his head deeper into the pillow.

“Hey, kid,” Mr. Stark said, low and quiet, and Peter risked cracking his eyes open for the first time in at least an hour to see Mr. Stark crouched in front of the bed to be at eye level with him. He was wearing a full three-piece business suit and Peter would have felt guilty about pulling him out of whatever meeting or important thing he was doing for a stupid migraine, but the tiny bit of light in the room was already piercing into his brain and Mr. Stark was quickly putting a hand over his face to block it, his own eyes wide. “Keep ‘em closed, Pete.”

His head still hurt too much to nod in agreement, but he did as he was told and heard a soft sigh from Mr. Stark. There was some rustling, then his hair was brushed back from his forehead and something cool, round, and metal pressed against his temple. He frowned slightly and a hand patted his shoulder. “Got something to try out,” Mr. Stark whispered, “hold still a minute.”

It was silent for a few seconds, then Peter’s enhanced hearing could pick up just the slightest mechanical whir from whatever was on his head. It was the same noise he heard from the Iron Man suits sometimes, and the stuff in Mr. Stark’s lab. He suddenly realized that the pounding in his head was receding, his senses settling back to their normal levels, the migraine slowly disappearing completely. Holy crap.

He waited a few minutes to be sure, then opened his eyes again. Mr. Stark was in the same place, holding a small silver and blue device to his head and watching his face carefully. When Peter managed a smile and stretched where he was lying on the bed, Mr. Stark grinned broadly. “Worked, huh?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, and knew the astonishment was clear in his voice. He sat up carefully, wary of the headache returning, but there was no cause for worry. He felt a little stiff and tired from the hours of tightly wound muscles and pain, but his head didn’t hurt when he moved or spoke. He laughed out of pure relief; he was expecting at least another hour of agony before he’d have felt okay to get up and move on his own, and then a few more hours after that where he’d have to be careful not to move too fast or speak too loud.

Mr. Stark caught him staring at the strange little device and gave him a scrutinizing look. “Am I right to assume this was your first in quite a while?”

Peter nodded. “At least a few months, yeah.”

“And right when you pulled back from hanging out in my lab so much, or working with me in the field. True scientific minds investigate coincidences to rule out causal relationships,” Mr. Stark said, nodding to himself. “I know you said they were better when you were working in the lab, and it got me thinking—mine aren’t as bad as yours, but I’ve never had a migraine start when I’m down in the lab. So I whipped up this little guy,” he held the device up again, “waited ‘til I started feeling like total hell in a handbasket, and tried it out on myself.” At Peter’s frown, he raised an eyebrow. “What, you think I’d just try something totally untested out on you?”

Peter shook his head; of course he didn’t think that. Mr. Stark was always really careful with Peter’s health and safety and Peter’s stuff, way more careful than he ever was with himself. “Did Miss Potts or Colonel Rhodes know about this?” he asked, and Mr. Stark narrowed his eyes at him.

“You going to rat me out, kid, after I cured your headache? Is that any way to thank me?” he tried to sound serious, but it was ruined by the hint of a smirk on his face. Peter just smiled and looked down at the little device.

“So what is it?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Electromagnetic resonator. Kind of like a tiny MRI for your head, but it’s based on arc tech. I’m not exactly sure of the medicine behind it, but as far as I know, doctors don’t know much about migraines either, so it’s anyone’s best guess. Couldn’t hurt, really, since it’s basically just designed to put out the EM frequency that the arc reactor does as a side effect, so at worst, it just wouldn’t do anything at all, including curing the headache. Turns out it works pretty well.” He and Peter shared a grin, the same one they always did in the midst of new science and innovation.

Then Mr. Stark moved to stand with an exaggerated groan, clapping Peter on the shoulder. “Come on, you can dissect the schematics after I bust you out of here. School’s about to be over anyway.”

Peter hopped off the bed beside him and they moved back into the little waiting room of the nurse’s office. Peter couldn’t help but notice that the nurse and the woman at the desk were both staring at Mr. Stark with their mouths practically hanging open. He’d have felt a flush of embarrassment over the whole thing again, but then again… it was pretty cool. Tony Stark, picking him up from school. Speaking of which….

“Mr. Stark, did you come in the suit?”

Mr. Stark tilted his head. “Fastest way to get here when they called me. Which was pretty funny, by the way, telling the board from Sweden I had to leave because I was getting a call from a high school in Queens.” Before Peter could even open his mouth to apologize, Mr. Stark was winking down at him. “I never thought I’d be using it, but ‘I have to go get my sick kid’ is a pretty solid excuse for getting out of something. We ought to set up a codeword or something for when I need it, I’m already imagining the possibilities.”

He waved his hands like he was picturing a blissful scene in front of him, but Peter was too busy staring at the far wall, biting his lip and trying really hard not to react. He wasn’t sure Mr. Stark realized what he’d just said, but Peter had certainly heard it. Maybe it was just a slip up, but suddenly the last few times he’d accidentally called Mr. Stark “dad” when they were working together didn’t seem quite as mortifying.

“Is there something I need to sign so I can take him home?” Mr. Stark was asking the desk lady when Peter tuned back into reality. She stammered and pushed the signout notebook at him. He bent to fill it out, and when he straightened again, hands in the pockets of his fancy suit and looking somehow both relaxed and importantly busy, Peter could definitely see why the staff were so freaked out. Heck, Peter had been intimidated by Mr. Stark, his reputation and his genius and the force of his personality, for months even after fighting alongside him. He still was, really. But at the same time, this was the Mr. Stark who’d asked Peter to call him Tony about four times now—not that Peter was ready to do that yet, but maybe soon—and who was usually wearing ratty jeans and greased-stained t-shirts in the lab, and sometimes fell asleep right where he was sitting and working because he had, like, five jobs and did a ridiculous amount of stuff for everyone all the time, and who Miss Potts and the Colonel treated like just a normal guy, which made it a lot easier for Peter to see him like that, too.

As they left the nurse’s office, Peter debated with himself for a minute before finally throwing caution to the wind and asking. “Mr. Stark, um, could we wait a few minutes before we leave?”

“Why?” Mr. Stark was looking at him expectantly, but Peter couldn’t think up a good enough excuse in time, and Mr. Stark’s expression turned knowing. “Are you trying to _use_ me, Peter? Am I just a tool for you, to gain ‘cool points’ with your friends?” He put a hand to his chest in mock outrage.

“No one says ‘cool points,’ Mr. Stark,” Peter said with a smile, which turned sheepish at Mr. Stark’s scoff.

“I know, I know, I’m old and that was lame, or whatever the word is now. Tell you what, you don’t tell Rhodey about that, and I’ll accompany you back to your locker, where you can take just long enough to retrieve some ‘important items’ that half the school knows you’re leaving with me.” It was accompanied by a conspiratorial smile, to which Peter laughed and they exchanged a quick high five to cement the deal.

He really did need some stuff out of his locker, and it just happened that he really did take until just about a minute before the final bell rang, which meant he only needed to spend another minute awkwardly trying to come up with something else to pretend to do at his locker until then.

He might have regretted it when the bell rang, the hallway was flooded with students, and they practically got swamped in both the normal end-of-school rush and the crowd that quickly formed around Mr. Stark, but it was kind of worth it for the look on Mr. Stark’s face when he suddenly had two dozen wide-eyed teenagers crowding around him and all trying to ask questions simultaneously.

And while it wasn’t the most comfortable or absolutely dignified position to be carried by Mr. Stark in the suit, somehow he was sure it still looked pretty impressive to everyone else. And the look on Flash’s face when Iron Man picked Peter up under the arms and flew off with him was worth all the temporary discomfort in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I am pretty medically sure that electromagnets and MRIs don’t actually do anything for headaches. But, you know, it’s a story about superhumans, I think I can add in some handwavy science.
> 
> I did try to alter the language a bit to fit a teenager’s narration better, but it’s possible it didn’t come off well. Oh well, like I said, this isn’t my usual kind of story, and I’ll be back to my normal stuff next.


End file.
